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Just a note: gifts for being a subscriber!

There’s a link on the e-mail ver­sion of this post. You can use it to down­load my most pop­u­lar book, This End­less Moment.

Rea­sons for Hope is a great col­lec­tion of “hope­ful tales,” col­lected by my buddy Boo­gie Jack Gaskill. I con­tributed one of the tales. Right click on the link and save the pdf file.

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So cease the intel­lec­tual work of study­ing say­ings and chas­ing words. Learn the back­ward step of turn­ing and reflect­ing light. Body and Mind nat­u­rally drop off, and the orig­i­nal face appears. If we want to attain the mat­ter of the inef­fa­ble, we should urgently prac­tice the mat­ter of the ineffable.

In gen­eral, a quiet room is good for Zen prac­tice, and food and drink are taken in mod­er­a­tion. Aban­don all involve­ments. Give the myr­iad things a rest. Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong. Stop the dri­ving move­ment of Mind, will, con­scious­ness. Cease intel­lec­tual con­sid­er­a­tion through images, thoughts, and reflec­tions. Do not aim to become a Bud­dha. How could it be con­nected with sit­ting or lying down?
http://the-middle-way.org/gpage3.html

The above quote is Mike Cross’ trans­la­tion of a por­tion of Mas­ter Dogen’s (19 Jan­u­ary 1200 – 22 Sep­tem­ber 1253) text on Zazen, “Rules of Sitting-Zen for Every­body.” (Dogen was a Japan­ese Zen Bud­dhist teacher born in Kyoto, and the founder of the Soto school of Zen in Japan.)

Dogen is mak­ing a point we think is essen­tial. To use his words: “Body and Mind nat­u­rally drop off, and the orig­i­nal face appears.”

Now, since this is Zen-speak, let me attempt an interpretation.

Orig­i­nal face — is all about what lies beneath who we (and the world) appear(s) to be. With­out “beneath” being a direc­tion, of course. We might describe Orig­i­nal face as our essen­tial nature, which gets obscured when our focus is on “things.”

Body and Mind drop off — to see through to Orig­i­nal face, our bare atten­tion must let go of our end­less focus on “me.” Our sto­ries about live, and our deper­son­al­iza­tion of our bod­ies cause us to spend our days lost in thought, as opposed to actu­ally living.

We talk a lot about drop­ping Mind.

This does not mean den­i­grate Mind or elim­i­nate Mind. It means “let go of cling­ing to Mind.” Fritz Perls put it,

“Go out of your mind, and come to your senses.”

Our ten­dency is to equate think­ing with actu­ally liv­ing. For exam­ple, many are the clients who insist on the cor­rect­ness of their imag­i­nary, inter­nal sto­ries. They tell me, in graphic detail, that, for exam­ple, they can’t change any­thing in their lives until they have “…thought things through, so as not to make a wrong decision.”

To drop the Mind is to notice our ten­dency to do just this, to make Mind games supe­rior to liv­ing. Or, as Dogen wrote,

“Aban­don all involve­ments. Give the myr­iad things a rest. Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong. Stop the dri­ving move­ment of Mind, will, con­scious­ness. Cease intel­lec­tual con­sid­er­a­tion through images, thoughts, and reflections.”

• Involve­ments — this is short­hand for things we obsess about — cir­cum­stances and periph­eral things, the things the Mind loves to “spin” about.
• Myr­iad things - the 10,000 things. This is “ori­en­tal speak” for “every­thing.” It means the end­less details of liv­ing — again, some­thing our Minds love to dig into.
• Good and bad, right and wrong — drop­ping labelling is the essence of liv­ing in the Now. To be present requires leav­ing judge­ment behind. Why? Most peo­ple judge (in their heads) while never chang­ing a thing in their liv­ing. The essence of liv­ing in an embod­ied way is to do what is nec­es­sary, with­out spend­ing time in end­less analysis.
• Stop… cease… - the les­son here, again, is on let­ting go of cling­ing to the games the Mind plays. The Mind is Mind, and does what Mind does. Attach­ing our­selves to Mind leads to more thought, and no living.

Drop­ping off the Body

We’ve been talk­ing about this for the last few weeks. Many peo­ple are also one step removed from their bod­ies. For exam­ple, peo­ple will say, “I have a headache.” As if there is a thing, a headache, that one has, like one has a book, or a cup. “My head aches” is more accu­rate. Or, “I am headachy.”

Sim­i­larly, “He turns me on” is inac­cu­rate. “I turn me on” is so. “I’m so bored” is inac­cu­rate. “I am bor­ing myself” is so.

Let­ting to body drop off means “stop talk­ing about your body (and your Mind!) as if they are some­how sep­a­rate from you.”

Your body and your Mind are how you expe­ri­ence being. They are not “separate.”

In a sense, we are say­ing that think­ing about an expe­ri­ence and expe­ri­enc­ing are two dif­fer­ent things. Mostly, we con­tent our­selves with think­ing, wish­ing, and hop­ing. Expe­ri­enc­ing, on the other hand, is close to our orig­i­nal face.

How? By pay­ing exquis­ite atten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing right now. In other words, to be lost in the expe­ri­ence of living.

When tast­ing, taste, when hear­ing, hear.

A client, the other day, described los­ing a box of CDs dur­ing a move. I used his love of music to say,

“Think­ing, describ­ing, judg­ing, this is back­ground noise. Reach in and turn down the vol­ume. Then, open your senses to the music you choose to lis­ten to, and raise the vol­ume, so you become lost in the music.”

Because he loves music, he imme­di­ately knew what I meant.

Lose your­self in your liv­ing, and you will have found your illu­sive orig­i­nal face.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. Clear­ing Body, Mind & Spirit — Body Cleanse
2. The Dance of Mind and Body
3. Heal­ing the Mind — Body Split
4. Body, Mind, and Spirit in Balance
5. Body, Mind, Spirit as Classroom

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Tagged with: attention • Buddha • Buddhist

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